Tales from the Fast Trains by Summersdale Publishers

‘If you’ve “done” Paris and Bruges and are wondering, “Where next?”, then this may be a quiet revelation’ Andrew Marr ‘splendid twenty-first-century railway adventure. At last, this IS the age of the train’ Simon Calder ‘compulsory reading’ Mark Smith, THE MAN IN SEAT 61 ‘Great fun, and an exhilarating read’ Sara Wheeler

ired of airport security queues, delays and all those extra taxes and charges, Tom Chesshyre embarks on a series of highspeed adventures across the Continent on its fast trains instead. He discovers the hidden delights of mysterious Luxembourg, super-trendy Rotterdam, much-maligned Frankfurt and lovely lakeside Lausanne, via a pop concert in Lille. It’s 186 mph all the way – well, apart from a power cut in the Channel Tunnel on the way to Antwerp. What fun can you have at the ends of the lines? Jump on board and find out...

www.summersdale.com

£8.99

Cover design © Sam Williams at Pickled Ink

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 1

24/05/2011 15:41:33

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS Copyright © Tom Chesshyre, 2011 Map by Robert Littleford All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publishers. The right of Tom Chesshyre to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Condition of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher. Summersdale Publishers Ltd 46 West Street Chichester West Sussex PO19 1RP UK www.summersdale.com Printed and bound in Great Britain ISBN: 978-1-84953-151-1 Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Summersdale books are available to corporations, professional associations and other organisations. For details contact Summersdale Publishers by telephone: +44 (0) 1243 771107, fax: +44 (0) 1243 786300 or email: nicky@summersdale.com. p.11, extract from ‘Cornish Cliffs’ by John Betjeman p.104, extract from The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene Disclaimer Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material; should there be any omissions in this respect we apologise and shall be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 2

24/05/2011 15:41:35

In memory of my grandparents, Neville & Alison, and John & Dora, train travellers from a bygone age

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 3

24/05/2011 15:41:35

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Chesshyre is staff travel writer on The Times and the author of How Low Can You Go?: Round Europe for 1p Each Way (Plus Tax) and To Hull and Back: On Holiday in Unsung Britain. He lives in London. Tales from the Fast Trains ‘Chesshyre… is an interesting, knowledgeable, discerning tour guide and a most genial companion’ Alexander Frater, author of Tales from the Torrid Zone ‘transforms seemingly unsurprising familiar territory – whether the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras or the cities of Frankfurt and Antwerp – into the stage for insights and adventures’ Dea Birkett, author of Serpent in Paradise To Hull and Back ‘Tom Chesshyre celebrates the UK... discovering pleasure in the unregarded wonders of the “unfashionable underbelly” of Britain’ THE MAIL ON SUNDAY ‘You warm to Chesshyre, whose cultural references intelligently inform his postcards from locations less travelled’ THE TIMES

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 4

24/05/2011 15:41:35

CONTENTS Map........................................................................................7 Chapter One St Pancras and Away: ‘Meet Me by Betjeman’..........................9 Chapter Two Dijon: ‘Kir Royales with the Dukes’........................................21 Chapter Three Antwerp: ‘Diamond Destination’............................................44 Chapter Four Lille: ‘Shorter than my Commute’..........................................70 Chapter Five Luxembourg City: ‘Lost in Euroland’.....................................94 Chapter Six Frankfurt: ‘Bankers, Junkies and Vanishing Cabaret Acts’......118 Chapter Seven Lausanne: ‘Beautiful Lake… Beautiful People’.......................141 Chapter Eight Rotterdam: ‘Oh, What a Rotta’.............................................164 Chapter Nine Marseilles: ‘On the Snow Train to the Med’..........................189 Chapter Ten Bruges: ‘Down by the Lake of Love’.....................................213 Chapter Eleven Tours: ‘Fine Wines, Favourites Ladies and King Edward VIII’...237 Chapter Twelve Cologne: ‘Fear and Loathing by the Rhine’.............................262 Chapter Thirteen Girona and Paris: ‘Surreal Seasides and Thoughts by the Seine’...288 Acknowledgements...........................................................313 Appendix............................................................................315

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 5

24/05/2011 15:41:35

‘People don’t take trains – trains take people.’ (after John Steinbeck)

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 6

24/05/2011 15:41:35

[INSERT – on

MAP

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 7

– recto

amendedtalesofthefasttrainsmap opposite CONTENTS]

24/05/2011 15:41:35

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 8

24/05/2011 15:41:36

CHAPTER ONE

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’ It’s a hot August morning at a bus depot in south London. There’s no bus in sight; not a single vehicle, not even a driver lurking in a corner smoking a fag. Minutes tick by as the sun bakes down on a forlorn concourse dotted with blackened pieces of bubblegum and strewn with fast-food wrappers. A sign informs us (I have been joined by a kindly elderly woman with a tartan shopping trolley) that the service runs ‘about every 6–10 minutes’. We wait at least a quarter of an hour before a bus arrives, driven at a rate of knots by a bald, expressionless man, his copy of the Daily Star wedged on the dashboard. The bus skids to a stop. We board. Then it zooms away, flashing past suburban houses, as though there’s some sort of emergency. The kindly elderly woman, gripping a rail tightly, glances at me and raises her eyebrows, seeming to suggest: ‘Par for the course.’ Which, we know only too well, it definitely is. And so I make it to my local Tube station, where a humid carriage full of tourists awaits. An enormous American sitting next to me is flicking through a London guidebook. She says to her companion: ‘We godda go see Lee-ces-ter Square.’ An unshaven fellow opposite is wearing a ‘Prague Pub Crawl’ 9

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 9

24/05/2011 15:41:36

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

T-shirt. He looks queasy, as though he’s been up all night; perhaps he’s just come back from Heathrow after a stag do. A woman with a child who has been crying slaps her, inducing yet more tears (and glances of disapproval from fellow passengers). It’s becoming stiflingly hot as the carriage fills and the train rolls onwards to South Kensington – as though there’s not enough air to go round. Football supporters with Chelsea and Manchester United shirts join us, bringing an aroma of lager to the mix: it’s the morning of their Community Shield match. Is there going to be some kind of brawl? There isn’t. They’re too interested in studying the Tube map, discussing which pubs to visit next. A typical London journey: delays, discomforts, dirt, overcrowding, with a bit of tension thrown in. But then the escalator rises into St Pancras International station, and everything changes. On the way to the ticket office, I pass a stylish ‘Sourced Market’, all gleaming tiles, spotlights and shiny display cabinets, with baskets piled high with cucumbers, plum tomatoes, apricots and organic potatoes. There are stacks of fresh loaves, salmon fillets, couscous lunches and pesto salads, and counters filled with tubs of cheeses, salamis and chutneys. Beyond this, on a corner turning into the main run of shops, whitewashed wooden tables are waiting for customers to try out a selection of organic wines lined on neat shelves. Even though we’re inside, it’s light and airy. Sophisticated-looking folk in sunglasses are sipping espressos at a cafe across the way; possibly French or Italian, judging by their casual espressodrinking ways. I walk on by, taking in an expensive chocolate shop, a Thomas Pink store (shirts £59), Rituals (purveyors of ‘upmarket body toiletries’), and a florist selling £20 bunches of flowers. Everything seems well-to-do, smart and far removed from the rest of London. No ‘Prague Pub Crawl’ T-shirts, football supporters, piles of litter or sense of slumming it here.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 10

24/05/2011 15:41:36

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’

I collect our tickets from a machine without a queue opposite a Body Shop, and then take another escalator to the level of the platforms. It’s quieter up by the trains. I don’t venture into the champagne and oyster bar, where a couple of women are happily enjoying midday flutes of bubbly. Instead, I make my way further along to the statue of John Betjeman, who is captured gazing upwards, holding on to his hat, with his jacket flying out behind him. He’s wearing rolled trousers with his feet sticking out comically. A sign gives the years of his life (1906–1984) and describes him simply as ‘POET, who saved this glorious station’ – Betjeman campaigned to stop St Pancras from being bulldozed in the 1960s. I look up at the pale-blue criss-crosses of the semicircular roof, completed in 1868 by the brilliant Victorian engineer William Henry Barlow. What an overwhelming sense of space; it seems impossible that the structure came so close to being destroyed. Lines from a Betjeman poem are etched in a circle on the concourse: ‘And in the shadowless unclouded glare/ Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where/ A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.’ It captures the feeling of the station above perfectly. And as I ponder how the lines seem to describe the scene so precisely, an American family walks by. The child points at the statue and asks: ‘What’s that?’ The mother replies: ‘A statue.’ The father steps forward to look more closely. ‘John Betjeman,’ he says. They scratch their heads and stare at the amusing statue of the station’s patron saint. ‘He sure looks funny,’ says the mother. And with that they make their way towards the trains. I’m meeting my girlfriend E by Betjeman at noon but there’s no sign of her. Has she got caught up in traffic on her bus? (She

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 11

24/05/2011 15:41:36

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

lives quite close by in Shoreditch.) Did I give her the wrong time? (I can’t get hold of her as her mobile seems to be switched off or out of reception.) Minutes tick by and I begin to wonder if we’re going to make our train; it leaves at 1 p.m. and you’ve got to check in half an hour beforehand. Then I look towards the huge bronze statue depicting lovers embracing near the station clock. The statue is called The Meeting Place, and I can see E standing beneath it. I walk across. ‘I just went to the big statue,’ she says. ‘The big romantic statue!’ ‘It’s the wrong statue,’ I point out. She looks at me nonplussed. ‘But I like this statue better,’ she replies, with logic that’s difficult to crack. We take a few pictures by The Meeting Place to mark the start of our adventures: it would, admittedly, have been more romantic to meet here. Then we rush through security (no hassles, no queues, no taking off shoes or belts, no confiscated bottles of water or peculiar body scans), up a travelator, and along the platform to carriage number 12. Soon, we’re off. The train pulls away, bang on time, drawing out of Barlow’s beautiful station into the August sunshine. It’s a lovely day to be heading south. And the feeling of ‘being on holiday’, of getting away from it all, hits us immediately. Psychotic bus drivers, overheated underground carriages, crowds and London in general seem somehow distant, as though by boarding the train we’ve stepped into another country. North London may be outside, with its graffiti and traffic jams, but we are on our way to the Continent… already anticipating the weekend ahead. There’s a strong sense of happily not quite knowing what’s coming next, as well as a realisation that these weekends have crept up on us out of the blue. You see, it’s not as though we’re

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 12

24/05/2011 15:41:36

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’

train obsessives, or that we refuse to fly for ‘green reasons’. Quite the opposite: I’ve always enjoyed catching flights and the sense of excitement of airports, even when departing from the dreariest terminals at Heathrow. In fact, I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about train travel. Yes, I quite like chugging along and watching through the window as the world passes by, but with all these cheap flights to obscure spots in Eastern Europe, sunny reaches of the Mediterranean and exotic locations halfway round the globe, I never got round to trying Eurostar. Until, that is, I was sent to Paris on a last-minute work assignment. Eurostar had been running for almost a decade by then, and I found the experience a revelation. In just over two hours (2 hrs 15 min. to be precise) I was in the French capital, having woken up that morning expecting a run-of-themill day in the office. Instead, I was walking past Notre Dame and through the Latin Quarter, poking my head in patisseries and stopping at lovely old cafes that I imagined George Orwell visiting in Down and Out in Paris and London, one of my favourite books. It was all so quick; so easy to get out of London and enter a totally different culture. And it made me wonder whether the hassle of airport security and catching annoying connecting shuttles into city centres at the other end was worth it. I loved the sensation of being catapulted out of Britain straight into the heart of an interesting European city. On that first trip, strolling along the Seine and visiting the serene and sprawling PèreLachaise cemetery, seeing the graves of Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison between work appointments, I was totally won over. What better way to travel? The seats were much bigger on Eurostar than on easyJet or Ryanair. You could stroll about without risking the wrath of cabin crews.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 13

24/05/2011 15:41:36

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

You only had to arrive half an hour before departure. It just seemed so civilised. Since that first experience, we’ve visited Ghent (a quaint Flemish city with lovely canals and a sleepy feel), Brussels (staying in a charming hotel by the Grand Place) and Amsterdam (to see the art galleries). All on speedy, lively and highly memorable weekend breaks. But why stop there? I began to look at the high-speed map… and a plan of sorts soon formed. It was a simple plan, but I couldn’t wait to get it started. I was going to explore Europe on its fast trains. Why not? The tickets were not too expensive, just £69 return to Paris or Brussels. I’ve paid more for journeys to Birmingham, taking about the same time as reaching Paris. And the map was full of intriguing possibilities: Dijon, Luxembourg, Bruges, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, Tours, Lausanne, Marseilles. Why not try a few of those? Fast trains to Paris, Lille and Brussels began on 14 November 1994. But now you can go at 186 mph to all sorts of places, with high-speed tracks being laid down across Europe constantly. The link through the Netherlands to Amsterdam (journey from St Pancras 4 hrs 16 min.) was completed not so long ago. There are plans for connections to Italy and Spain; a link between Paris and Figueres in northern Spain recently opened, reducing the journey time by ninety minutes. You can already reach dozens of places throughout France. Not only is there the excitement and fun of catching all these new rides – there’s also the sense that high-speed rail travel will be everywhere soon; that Europe will be linked by faster and faster services (200 mph trains are on their way), and that the nature of Europe itself, and how we see it and travel around it, is about to change. It’s as if Europe is shrinking by the day. The day I write this, a story in The Sunday Times news section declares: ‘TRAINS

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 14

24/05/2011 15:41:36

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’

TO BEAT PLANES ACROSS EUROPE. IT WILL SOON BE QUICKER TO REACH MANY CITIES BY NEW HIGH-SPEED RAIL LINKS THAN BY JET: AIRPORT DELAYS AND RISING TAXES BOOST THE APPEAL OF RAIL TRAVEL.’ The fast tracks seem to be conquering the Continent – we can zip about at vast speeds to places that would have been days away a century ago, major journeys, without taking to the skies. A few hours in a comfortable carriage can get you a very long way. Climb on board at St Pancras and vast swathes of land have opened up: so many places for a new type of weekend break. So with a quiet six months ahead and a part-time job that makes long weekends for travel possible, I’ve decided to give it a go. I’ll head off on a series of adventures: a trip every fortnight or so. It’ll be an insight into places I might never have otherwise visited. It’ll also – at least I hope so – turn out to be fun. Isn’t that what a weekend break should be all about, after all? ‘You’re hurtling towards forty, this could be your last chance for years,’ says E, seeming to relish the word ‘hurtling’, as the train squeals along north London tunnels in the direction of Kent. I give her a look. E’s a few years younger – a fact she loves to remind me of. ‘Give me a break, love,’ I reply. ‘You couldn’t do this with kids,’ she says baldly. I pause to take this in. I know what she’s driving at, but I’m not quite sure how to answer. ‘I think you could with a small child,’ I say, after a bit. You could, I reckon, easily travel with a baby for a high-speed weekend – it would probably be easier than travelling by plane. But E continues to twist the knife, enjoying her ‘you’ll soon be past it’ line of conversation. ‘This could be your last footloose summer,’ she continues, warming to her theme in the strange orange light of our carriage as it passes beneath the City. ‘Hmmm,’ I reply. 15

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 15

24/05/2011 15:41:36

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

‘I mean that in a good way: let’s make the most of it,’ she says. And with that she flags down a steward in a charcoal-grey uniform: we’re travelling in Premium Leisure for a first-trip treat. Soon a mini bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (for E) and a burgundy (for me) are delivered. ‘Here’s to high-speed Europe,’ says E, raising her glass. We drink to the trip ahead, papers and guidebooks spread out on our neat table with its cute little lamp. So much better, so much more comfortable, so much more the way it should be, than on a budget plane. No sticky seats, no stag groups, no jammed knees or crunched limbs. Just a decent drop of vin, a fast train, and two hours to go till Paris. The hills, haystacks, vineyards, electricity pylons and motorways of Kent soon flash past. Britain seems better when it’s a bit of a blur, I’m thinking, as we cross a delightful expanse of the Medway and pass alongside the M20, watching traffic heading slowly for the ferries and the Channel Tunnel. Apple groves and cornfields spread out across the gently undulating landscape before we reach the Folkestone White Horse – a striking limestone figure of a horse with a flowing main and tail carved into a hill overlooking the tunnel’s terminal. Apparently there was a great fuss when this was created by the local artist Charlie Newington in 2003 as the hill is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and nature groups opposed this Millennium project. But it looks inspiring, to me, from the train; a sort of goodbye wave to tunnel-goers, or a hello welcome to people coming in the other direction. And then we plunge into the calming darkness, the lights flicker orange again, we level out, and I imagine all the water, all the ferries and cargo ships (and fish) up above. In a halfhour dash from St Pancras we have left Britain behind. Now

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 16

24/05/2011 15:41:37

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’

we’ve got cod and mackerel and wrecks of old ships and many millions of gallons of water on top of carriage number 12. The train drops to 100 m below sea level at its deepest point – I know this because a ‘Tunnel Trivia’ section of Eurostar’s Metropolitan magazine says so – running through the gritty chalk that stretches across the Channel. We may have been able to do this for a decade and a half or so, since the tunnel opened, but it still feels somehow impossible. Each time I go, I can’t help getting the same sensation. Are we really riding trains under the sea? Our destination is Dijon, the capital of Burgundy; we’re changing in Paris for a TGV connection onwards: TGV stands for Trains à Grande Vitesse and is the high-speed part of SNCF (French railways), which we’re soon about to get to know very well. I’ve never been to Dijon and am curious. We read up on the city, which has a ‘slick prosperity’ and is an ‘affluent university town: smart, modern and young’, according to the Rough Guide. There’s also a section about the golden age of the Dukes of Burgundy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ‘He looks like a rum fellow,’ says E, examining a picture of Philip the Bold – who appears to be wearing make-up. Our hotel is named after the first of the great dukes, Philip the Good. The Rough Guide’s verdict is ‘some rooms stunning, others a little bland’ – which sounds a bit hit or miss; the hotel had looked pretty good on the Internet. We shoot back up above the ground into the light, settled in our grey leather seats with their purple leather headrests as French fields and flatlands that have been fought over in so many bloody battles come into view. There’s an ugly plastics factory and several large pyramid-shaped piles of gravel in the approach to Lille. Feeling a little sleepy after the wine, we have a snooze and wake to find ourselves travelling through a corridor

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 17

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

of graffiti in the banlieue of Paris. Bright swirls declare the names of the graffiti artists: ‘YOKOK, ‘BANKO’ and ‘DIAL’. Then we look at our watches. And something dawns on us. We’ve got just thirty-five minutes to reach Gare de Lyon from Gare du Nord for the onward train to Dijon. Is that enough time? This is how we find ourselves in a taxi driven by a man who looks like a funeral director, listening to France’s version of Jazz FM and speeding along Boulevard de Magenta, scattering pedestrians at every intersection. E has asked the pale-faced driver, who is dressed in a black suit and has heavy black rings under his eyes, to go vite. And he is not messing about. A haunting blues number is surreally playing as we make our dramatic progress. E looks at me as if I should somehow take matters in hand (what can I do? anyway, he’s making good time) as we take an impressive swerve to miss a bollard, passing a bench where a kissing couple glances up, looking at the driver as though he’s mad. He clearly is. He seems to be going even faster as the music switches to a soulful rendition of a song with the line ‘Every time we say goodbye, I die a little’ near Place de la République. He takes the Place about as quickly as is physically possibly in an old Renault. We slide about in the back seat, seeing the world ÉGALITÉ inscribed at the foot of a statue of a famous figure – it’s too fast to tell who. And so we reach the station, with seven minutes to spare before the TGV to Dijon. I pay the nine-euro fare. The funeral director smiles thinly, with just a hint of a twinkle in his eyes. Then we race to a distant platform in a far-off annex and board the first TGV of our trip. The doors close almost immediately behind us. ‘If there’d been a queue for the taxi we would have been staying in Paris tonight,’ E accurately declares. ‘Don’t they have a policy or something

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 18

24/05/2011 15:41:37

ST PANCRAS AND AWAY: ‘MEET ME BY BETJEMAN’

on how long you should have between trains? I mean, that was skin of the teeth stuff.’ The TGV is a smart affair with black and grey stripy seats and a wine-red carpet. We are in a silent carriage and a sign on the seat in front says: ‘Merci de régler votre téléphone portable en mode vibreur.’ We slump in our seats and catch our breath for a bit. We’re sitting next to a woman who quickly falls asleep with her mouth wide open like a human goldfish, and a father who is playing cards with two well-behaved children. The flick and occasional slap of a game of twist is all we can hear in the carriage as we quickly leave Paris behind. The TGV holds the world record speed for a wheeled train at 357.2 mph (achieved by a lunatic test driver in 2007), and average speeds on journeys can reach above 170 mph. This compares to the Eurostar’s record speed of 208 mph, with a top speed of 186 mph and an average that varies depending on how many stops it makes. We’re soon well out of the French capital, shooting through forests with a royal blue sky above, and breaking into rolling countryside covered in a patchwork of fields. Brown cows munch grass. Villages with green-shuttered houses come and go. We stop at the town of Montbard, where there are three tattered EU flags and a French tricolour on poles by the quiet station. It looks deadly dull, and the Rough Guide’s verdict is of the ‘pretty but otherwise unexciting hillside town of Montbard’. E concurs: ‘It doesn’t look like we’re missing much.’ ‘No, I don’t think we are,’ I reply – the place looks half asleep. ‘Let’s not add Montbard to the list,’ says E. The ‘list’, which we’re making up as we go along, is where we plan to go on our fast-train weekends. It’s a moveable feast: we’ll go where we fancy, always aiming for somewhere a bit different – somewhere we haven’t been that sounds worth investigating (normally a little bigger than Montbard, mind you).

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 19

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

‘OK, Montbard’s out,’ I say, as we pull away, soon passing wind farms and travelling along a glimmering brown river. ‘Actually, love, anywhere’s good with me. I just like the adventure. I’ll just pack my PJs and passport: you tell me where next!’ says E. In reality, though, we’re planning the journeys together, poring over maps and plotting routes in pubs after work, and on our weekends ‘off’ our fast-train jaunts. It’s that slightly random feeling of zooming away from Britain and seeing what the fast trains throw at us that I’m hoping to capture. And with those thoughts in mind, we pull up at our first destination. ‘Bienvenu à Gare de Dijon,’ says a big sign. ‘I can’t believe we’re here, it was so quick,’ says E. It’s been 1 hr 37 min. from Paris, and we are only a short taxi ride to the Philippe Le Bon hotel. It really does not feel as though we were (almost) meeting by the Betjeman statue just four and a half hours ago. We cross a modern plaza to a taxi rank, avoid a tramp reeking of one too many vins, and head for the hotel. Our fast-train weekends have begun.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 20

24/05/2011 15:41:37

CHAPTER TWO

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’ The streets of Dijon are quiet. Our taxi driver does not look like a funeral director this time, but he’s a lover of jazz and blues too, and he zips around the narrow labyrinthine rues towards the Philippe Le Bon hotel at just about the same breakneck speed. As we rush along, the afternoon sun lights up the entrance to Jardin Darcy – a pretty, well-kept park with a fountain at its centre and nobody around. We skirt the park and delve southwards among magnolia-coloured buildings. The city centre seems compact, old and just the right sort of place for a weekend break. There is no traffic and soon we are on a quiet side street at the entrance to the hotel. First impressions of the Philippe Le Bon hotel are not all that bon. Not bon at all. We cross a filthy pavement and enter an arched doorway to a drab grey building. A red sign alerts us that the hotel has three stars, though I wonder what that means in Dijon. A poster on the door, of the sort you might expect in a tabac, advertises a local fête. Inside, it is dimly lit and no one is about. There are a couple of red leather armchairs in a lounge, and a picture of two ballet dancers on the wall opposite the reception desk. A leaflet grandly promotes the Bar de L’Hôtel, 21

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 21

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

showing a 1980s-style pink and purple room with stools and rows of bottles; but another note informs us that the bar is closed at the moment. We wait for a while, and then a dark-haired woman arrives. She is wearing black and we can hear a TV or radio jabbering away in a back room. ‘Bonjour,’ I say, and ask in my schoolboy French if we can check in. ‘Bonjour,’ she replies, raising an eyebrow and asking for our reservation name. Civilities complete, she is soon, in no-nonsense style, marching us back over the dirty pavement and across the tiny street to our room in a building opposite. We ascend a winding stone staircase and enter the Jean Le Bon room, named after another of Burgundy’s famous dukes. There’s a reproduction of an old oil painting depicting Jean Le Bon on the door, showing him with long ginger hair, a ginger beard and a big satisfied grin. ‘He’s a rum-looking chap as well,’ comments E. All the Burgundy dukes seem to have been characters, judging from the pictures we’ve seen of them so far. ‘Looks like a bit of a laugh though,’ she adds. Inside, the dark-haired woman shows us a surprisingly stylish and comfortable room, which has a high ceiling with exposed beams, cream-coloured walls, a little minibar and a tiny flatscreen TV. There’s a decent-sized bed, traditional French shutters on the windows and a neat bathroom. It may not be ‘stunning’ but nor is it ‘bland’, as the Rough Guide predicted. It feels secluded and private, like our own small apartment in the city centre. The dark-haired woman, in no-nonsense style, departs. Then, so do we. We drop off our bags and do what you’re meant to do coming up to 7 p.m. on a weekend break in the heart of one of France’s most famous vineyard regions: we go

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 22

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

in search of a wine bar. It does not take us long to find one. But along the way we quickly get a sense of Dijon city life that the tourist brochures don’t tell you about. After passing an immaculate little park with benches and the grand copperdomed, sandstone building of the Museum of Burgundy Life, we come to a corner at which a boisterous group of down-atheel drunks are putting away bottles of wine and cans of beer, gesticulating wildly in animated conversation on the steps of an old building. There is about a dozen of them, and this is obviously a favourite meeting spot: we’ve seen others tottering by along the side streets nearby, as well as the chap by the station’s taxi rank. The shadowy pavements in this part of the town are dirty in ways better not described; it’s best to walk down the middle of the roads. One man with scraggly, ginger hair (not dissimilar in appearance to Jean Le Bon on a particularly bad day) lurches our way in trousers that seem several sizes too big. He’s wearing a streaky grey shirt that might once have been white, with rips and missing buttons, and saying something in an elaborate, pontificating style that sounds a bit like: ‘C’est arrgh-gar: arhhh?’ We do not stop for a chat. Instead, not far along, we find ourselves turning into a beautiful little square named after one of France’s most renowned nineteenth-century writers – Émile Zola, best known for his J’Accuse polemic defending the falsely imprisoned army officer Alfred Dreyfus. There’s a fair bit of modern-day debate, and general chatter, in the square. It’s buzzing with life, with chairs and tables spread out under sycamore trees and smart locals gossiping away. There’s a restaurant named Les Moules Zola, where elegant diners are piling into great mounds of mussels at tables with neat white tablecloths, a fun-looking Pizz’ Zola, a Sushi King and a bar called Les Aviateurs, outside which folk in leather are drinking

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 23

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

beers from little glasses, with rock music filtering out into the square. Place Émile Zola – the writer never in fact lived in Dijon – feels lively and very very French (as I suppose it would do in the centre of France). There do not appear to be many tourists around: we don’t spot any guidebooks or maps. It’s a balmy evening and we stroll to the far side of the square, where we find Le Chabrot. This pitches itself as a ‘bar à vin’; which sounds just about right. Having polished off huge baguettes not so long ago on the train, our priority is wine. ‘À toute vitesse’, as E says – which I take to mean quickly (her French is much better than mine). We sit down at a table with a pink tablecloth. At the next table, a middle-aged man with a goatee, who looks as though he could be a poet or a philosopher, is very thoughtfully sipping a soup. The bar and restaurant is named after the practice of ‘faire chabrot, mettre le vin dans la soupe’; i.e. mixing wine into soup. The poet-philosopher seems to be intently enjoying his soup with wine. I’ve never seen a soup of any sort so thoughtfully and lovingly consumed. But we order something a little different. The waitress delivers two glasses of Kir, the cocktail of nine parts white wine and one part blackcurrant liqueur that can be served with champagne instead of wine, when it’s known as Kir Royal. It’s one of E’s favourite drinks, and I’d read on the train that it was invented in Dijon, where it was named after a local post-World War Two mayor named Felix Kir. He had been a great pioneer of the twinning of towns and he used the cocktail to show off both the local wine and crème de cassis at the same time when foreign dignitaries visited. The drink is said to have been invented during the war when the Nazis confiscated almost all of Burgundy’s red wine. Locals tired of white wine alone, experimented and created the new

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 24

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

mix, which was later popularised thanks to Felix Kir, with his foreign visitors taking the drink’s fame around the world. Seldom can a tipple have had such an unusual past. We raise our glasses and try our cocktails. They taste great, and it’s wonderful just to relax after the day’s travelling; not that it’s been an especially testing day, other than the crazy dash across Paris. ‘Steady on, it’s strong stuff, love,’ says E, noticing me knock back my glass a little swiftly. The poet-philosopher, who seems to be a kind of ghost of Zola, glances over and smiles our way (he obviously understands English). Kir does taste a bit like a grown-up version of Ribena and it’s easy to swig it down. ‘Are you sure?’ I reply, finding it hard to believe that a drink that reminds me of school lunches and childhood can be too potent. ‘It’s something like forty per cent,’ she says vaguely, though I’m pretty sure she’s just making that up, and I can’t tell if she’s being serious or not. ‘Just wait till you stand up,’ she says, smiling. And as she says this she mimics me gulping down a glass and wobbling about. Nevertheless, we both finish our glasses of Kir pretty quickly: it’s not really a drink that lasts long, whatever E says. We ask for the wine list, and a substantial tome in a red leather cover, as big as a reasonably sized phone directory, is brought over and almost lovingly presented to us. ‘Now that’s what I call a wine list,’ says E, as we flick through the many pages, settling on glasses of Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Beaune 2003, a white wine. This costs seven euros each but we might as well push the boat out in Burgundy. The stuff would probably be £10 a glass in a fancy bar back in London. Time slips by pleasantly looking across a narrow cobbled street with a bus stop, towards the crowds at the tables under

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 25

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

the sycamore trees in the centre of the square. We make a plan for tomorrow, using the guidebook and the map. Then we have our first, and we hope last, near-death experience on our fasttrains adventure. A bus has stopped to pick up passengers, blocking the street. E is in the middle of an involved second glass of Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Beaune 2003 discussion about the wine. ‘It’s complex,’ she says, swilling the wine about. ‘It talks to you afterwards.’ ‘Really,’ I say, examining my glass. ‘I’m not drunk,’ she continues. ‘Not at all. What you can really taste is the sunshine. The sunshine in the wine!’ As she says this her eyes widen, and get wider, and just as she is trying to say something a moped speeds by on the pavement from behind me – fast – the air brushing my shoulder. An inch or so closer and it would not have been a pretty sight outside Le Chabrot on Place Émile Zola. Tables would have tumbled, delicious wine-soups and wines would have spilled. European Health Insurance Cards, ours at least, would have been called into action. ‘Good lord! It was coming straight at us,’ says E. The Ghost of Zola, who is in the middle of an elaborate fish dish, raises both bushy eyebrows, mutters ‘ooh la la’, and whistles faintly; though he doesn’t seem all that surprised. The moped rider, who was helmet-less and about sixteen years old, disappears in a cloud of exhaust fumes around a corner. It’s getting dark; the sun seems to go down fast round here (as does the wine, we’re beginning to notice). We finish our glasses ‘to steady our nerves’, and order a couple more: why not, we’re on holiday in Burgundy after all? Anyway it’s good research, all this wine-tasting. ‘It’s good research,’ I say, speaking my thoughts.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 26

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

‘Very good,’ says E, selecting a Viognier. The beaming waitress brings our wines. Zola gives us a smile, and orders another glass of red for himself while the waitress is about. A half hour or so passes by as we discuss the state of the world. ‘Another?’ I ask, flicking through the pages of the huge red list. ‘It would be rude not to,’ replies E. ‘It’s excellent research,’ I say. ‘Yes, excellent,’ E agrees. Time slides by once more, without further near-death experiences, looking out across the sycamores of Dijon’s Place Émile Zola, drinking our fine Burgundy wine. Then we settle the bill, wave goodbye to Zola (with whom we seem to have made friends), and walk along the lanes that don’t seem so dirty any more, and past the down-and-outs who don’t seem as noisy as they were earlier, to the Philippe Le Bon hotel. We’ve got a day and a half of discovering Dijon ahead and already we’re happily in the fast-train weekend groove. ‘Everything is only a dream,’ Zola once wrote, and it feels a bit like that when we wake in the unfamiliar surroundings of our pitch-black shuttered room, with its high ceiling and purple curtains in the backstreets of the capital of Burgundy. We eat a breakfast of croissants and wedges of fresh baguette with jam in a basement dining room decorated with strange pieces of multicoloured art made from bamboo. From here, we walk towards the cathedral along cobbled streets; the city is compact and really quite small for an administrative centre of a département: in this case, the Côte d’Or. The city limits have a population of about 151,000 people, while the greater Dijon area is more like 240,000. The result is a sleepy feel, especially

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 27

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

as it’s quite early on a Saturday morning during the French holiday season. There are one or two dog walkers and a few folk returning from boulangeries with baguettes in paper wrappers tucked under their arms. ‘The rule in France is you’ve got to get your bread early,’ comments E, who worked for a few summers at a chateau in France when she was a teenager. ‘If you wait till after midday, it’s hopeless.’ We pause at an immobilier, which is offering four-bedroom houses for €483,000 and two-bedroom flats for €230,000 – not steep by London standards, but still pretty pricey. We stroll up Rue Monge, passing the fine cream-stone church of St Jean, with its mini-spires and dome. The road takes us up an incline to the grand façade of the Palais des Ducs, where the Dukes of Burgundy had their headquarters in medieval times. It’s another perfect, cloudless day. The blue of the sky almost matches the blue of the tricolours hanging at the front of the palace, which these days acts as the town hall and also houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts. We take in a Produits Régionaux gift shop near the entrance, where ‘I LOVE DIJON’ T-shirts are on sale for €16 and little pots of the famous local mustard for one euro. There are also extraordinarily complicated-looking wine-tasting kits retailing for €290, pain d’épices gingerbreads flavoured with fig and apricot (a local speciality, six euros), and boxes for making Kir and Kir Royal, consisting of crème de cassis, champagne and Bourgogne Aligoté, considered the best wine to use in making Kir (€35). It feels like a tourist trap… yet there are only a couple of other tourists about. Which is perfect. On these high-speed weekends, we’re not intending to have high-speed dashes about the places at the end of the lines. The whole point seems to me to go fast out of Britain, so you can go slow when you arrive. Along the way, we’re hoping to stumble across places of interest; we’re not

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 28

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

planning heavy itineraries or fixing appointments in advance. The point is simply to ‘be a tourist’ and see what happens. And when it’s quiet, that just makes everything easier. These tales from the fast trains will – I hope – form a series of serendipitous discoveries. I want us to have chance encounters and finds: the good and the not-so-good, whatever comes our way. So ‘being tourists’ in Dijon, we buy tickets for the Musée des Beaux-Arts. We know next to nothing about the museum as we cross a cobbled courtyard with an old well in a corner and enter; maybe it’s going to be one of those places you walk swiftly round in twenty minutes. We quickly establish it isn’t. There are rooms packed with delicate white marble figurines of ethereal angels and saints. There are rooms full of ancient Egyptian artefacts – mummies, funeral masks, pieces of hieroglyphics – collected by the local Egyptologist Albert Gaget (1856–1916). There are rooms devoted to the works of another local, the sculptor François Pompon (1855–1933), who made a name for himself with his works depicting the animal kingdom: funny little wild boars, sleek panthers, peculiar pelicans, oxen, owls, polar bears, and much else. Most of the works are in white stone and the effect is of entering some sort of weird white motionless zoo, with delightful finds at every turn. The museum is a warren of curious corridors and side rooms. It’s not on the scale of a Louvre or a National Gallery – which gives it charm. We enter a room with oil paintings including a superb work entitled ‘Paysage’ by Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878), a Parisian painter who I have to admit I’ve never heard of before. It shows a rolling French landscape of the type we saw out of the window of the TGV, dark greens and deep browns beneath a pearly grey sky. ‘Every stroke is amazing,’ says E, peering close to the frame. ‘It must have taken him months.’

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 29

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

There’s an arresting picture by another artist I didn’t know of, the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), capturing a young woman wearing pink and brushing her hair in a bedroom with clothes scattered on an armchair and a double bed with a ruffled blanket in a corner. You cannot see the woman’s face as her hands are held to her head. Light blazes across her bedroom and it feels as though there is a mystery at the heart of the painting. The title is ‘Doing Own’s Hair Woman’ – at least that’s what the display caption says. There are works by Cézanne showing vibrant country scenes, mesmerising pictures by Monet depicting the cliffs by sun-dappled seas in Normandy, and paintings of women in twisty poses by Edouard Manet. What’s so nice about the place is a) we’re among only a handful of people looking around, b) it’s not grand and pretentious in the way so many art galleries can be, and c) there are amazing works just about everywhere you look, even in hidden away corners. Not far from a lift shaft in a narrow corridor leading downwards on a slope to another level, we stop to try to get our bearings (we have no idea where we are). As we look at our museum map, trying to make sense of things, we notice a small bronze sculpture on a funny little shelf. It depicts a nude woman on a rock, holding her hands behind her neck, through tumbling hair – looking as though she is lazily and happily stretching upwards. E examines the panel. ‘Oh my God, it’s a Rodin!’ she says. The display reads: ‘Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), La Toilette de Venus, 1885.’ It really is beautiful. Here we are in a funny passageway in an obscure corner of the museum and there are masterpieces tucked away on dusty shelves – almost looking as though they’ve been forgotten. In some galleries this would surely be the star attraction, carefully positioned in pride of place for all visitors to see; but not in the delightfully quirky Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 30

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

The best is yet to come. After stopping at an eye-catching picture of a Flemish landscape painted by Jan Breughel the Elder in the early seventeenth century – the detail of tiny countryside figures in the foreground strangely reminds me of the works of industrial scenes by L. S. Lowry, with his matchstick characters walking about the gritty streets of Manchester and Salford – we reach a grand room containing the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy. There are tourists here, mainly French, peering at the ornate tombs of two of the great dukes who ruled during the medieval heyday of Burgundy from the 1360s to 1477, when the dukes’ influence was important across the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands as well as this part of France. The tombs are fabulously decorated, made out of marble sculpted into lions and angels, with side panels showing monks lurking in carved hollows. The first belongs to Philip the Bold, who, we learn from a museum display, married Margaret of Flanders, soon to become the richest heiress in Europe after the death of her father, the Count of Flanders. It was this marriage that united the region and led to a golden age for Burgundy, during which Dijon, Philip the Bold’s favourite town, was built up, creating the pretty historic centre that remains today. The fortune of Burgundy at the time was also aided by money from France, as Philip (clearly a smooth operator) acted as regent for the mad French king Charles VI, who was his nephew, and who had taken the throne at the age of eleven. He was succeeded by John the Fearless – the second tomb. John the Fearless seems to have been a thoroughly unpleasant chap, known for his fits of anger and for his scheming in the court of France, where he also exerted influence while Charles VI remained incapable of running the country. He made contact with the court of Henry V in the run-up to the French defeat

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 31

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

at the Battle of Agincourt, and it was not quite known where his allegiances lay. His life came to an end after fifteen years in charge with an axe to the back of his head, delivered by one of the French king’s advisers. It’s difficult not to get caught up in the intrigue of the time, standing amid the tombs, with portraits of the dukes gazing down from the walls. It’s not dry and boring – the stories from the time seem to come alive in the echoing chamber, as though medieval phantoms are among us. You get a real sense of history just being in the room. If one place can be said to be the spiritual centre of Dijon, we definitely feel we’ve found it here. There were four principal dukes during the glory days of Burgundy. Nasty John (with his nasty end) was succeeded by Philip the Good. Perhaps he was chosen by our hotel owner because he was the most libertine and flamboyant of the dukes – marrying three times, having many mistresses (and at least seventeen illegitimate children), enjoying banquets, music and generally having a fine old life. The Burgundy dukes of the period were great patrons of the arts and, as a museum display says: ‘The four dukes, especially Philip the Bold and Philip the Good, lavishly displayed their wealth, attracted artists, musicians and men of letters, built palaces, founded religious institutions and amazed their contemporaries by staging extravagant festivities… in the late Middle Ages the Court of Burgundy became the court of courts.’ Philip the Good was another canny operator, choosing to recognise England’s Henry V as the future king of France, and handing over Joan of Arc, who had been stirring up French nationalist opinion, to the English. For this, he received 10,000 gold crowns. Later, he cunningly returned his sympathies to the French, while doing so establishing the Duchy of Burgundy, with Dijon as the capital.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 32

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

The result was that by the time he was succeeded in 1467 by his son Charles the Bold, things were looking very rosy indeed in Burgundy. But they weren’t for long. Charles was a pugnacious character, who had inherited his father’s love of the good life but ran the dukedom, which had become probably the wealthiest state in Europe, in the spirit of machismo. He rubbed up the wrong way against Louis XI of France. There were pointless wars. Money began to run out. Eventually, Charles was killed on the battlefield in 1477, and Burgundy was carved up between the French and the Hapsburgs. The glory days of Burgundy were over, just over 500 years ago. Now the former dukedom is just part of another French département. But the pride in that time is still clearly strong in its capital – if all the hotels, cafes and bars named after the four grand dukes are anything to go by. E and I inspect the dukes’ portraits. These hang on a far wall. They certainly were a curious-looking lot. E has a field day with Philip the Bold, who sits in profile with his bulbous nose poking out and his raised eyebrows. He’s wearing a bejewelled tunic and looking quite smug. ‘He sure likes his lippy, this one,’ says E. Indeed, he does appear to be wearing lipstick. ‘And look at those eyebrows. Don’t tell me those are natural. Look at those arches.’ I take a closer look at Philip the Bold’s eyebrows, and say: ‘Hmmm,’ as I’ve no idea what else to say. ‘What’s going on there?’ she wonders out loud, referring to Philip the Bold, before switching her attention to John the Fearless: ‘Look at this one: he’s a right little dandy!’ ‘Here we have Fearless John with his jewels and his pearls,’ she continues. ‘Don’t you think that’s a funny dress he’s wearing?’ We move on to Philip the Good, who seems relatively normal, with limited jewellery and not a hint of lipstick, and to Charles

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 33

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

the Bold, who has ragged red hair and is solemnly holding a sword… the source of the Burgundy downfall. After this burst of culture, we step out into the narrow streets of Dijon at the back of the Palais des Ducs. It’s a scorcher of a day now – the temperature must be up to 30°C. We potter about and stop by a group of people staring at a stone carved in the shape of an owl. It’s attached to the cream-coloured north wall of the church of Notre Dame, and tourists are reaching up and rubbing the owl, which looks a bit worn down by all the attention. There’s an English-speaking guide, who we overhear saying: ‘You must rub with your left hand. Not your right!’ Someone had been attempting to rub with his right hand. ‘You must rub with your left hand as it is closest to your heart. That will bring you luck. That is our tradition in Dijon, dating back from the fifteenth century.’ The old dukes, in their dresses, jewels and lipstick, probably had a go themselves. E and I rub the owl with our left hands, catching a bit more of the tour guide’s spiel: ‘Somebody destroyed the owl in 2001. This is now an almost perfect replica. We were very sad it was destroyed. Perhaps, it was done by someone whose wish didn’t work out.’ The tour guide crosses the street in the direction we are going and we find ourselves in front of a building marked in our guidebook as being the Hôtel de Vogue, dating from the Renaissance. The building has an ornate roof made out of shiny gold, green, brown and black tiles aligned in symmetrical shapes. It’s a very unusual roof, and we overhear the tour guide say: ‘Such roofs are a speciality of our region. In the past they showed the prestige of the family living there. The designs are said to come from inspiration picked up from the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria and Israel – during the Crusades. Such tiles are really expensive. If you look at them at the right angle, they glint like gold.’

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 34

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

We copy the group of tourists and look at the tiles at the right angle. They do indeed glint like gold. ‘Now I’m an expert on the roofs of Burgundy,’ says E, deadpan. ‘How about a coffee?’ We do, but first we pass by the church of Notre Dame, with its columns, vaulted ceiling and rows of seats that look more like dinner table chairs than pews. E puts a fifty-cent piece in a tin and lights a little cierge (candle) near the altar. It’s a peaceful spot and it’s strange to think that yesterday around this time we were on our way to St Pancras. Sitting at a table in the sunshine outside a cafe called Le Jacquemart, we look around. There’s still a slow, soporific feel to Dijon; even though it’s midday now there are not really many people about. We drink good coffees bought from a waiter who seems pleased to have tourists (not just locals) as customers, and consult a brochure we picked up at the church entitled Dijon, The Owl’s Trail: Let The Owl Show You The Town! This slender publication highlights the main sights, which you can see by following metal owl symbols bolted to the pavements. There is a page on the church of Notre Dame, which is from the twelfth century, predating the most famous dukes. Philip the Bold left his mark on the structure, we read, by adding a clock known as the Jacquemart to the top of the church tower. The clock was ‘a war spoil’ taken from Coutrai, now in north-west Belgium, and it depicts a man, known as Jacquemart, smoking a pipe, and his wife Jacqueline. These bronze figures strike the bell on the hour, sending a distinctive echoing clang across the sandstone buildings of the city centre. The booklet also tells the sad story – possibly a legend – of an unlucky man who went to get married at the church in the thirteenth century. As he stepped up to the entrance, a stone gargoyle crumbled and fell from an awning, killing him instantly.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 35

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

There was an outcry and all the gargoyles were removed, replaced many centuries later by a sculptor whose masonry was better trusted. ‘The poor guy,’ says E, looking up at the new gargoyles. ‘Not the best way to go,’ I agree. And then we find out about mustard. It’s impossible to visit Dijon without learning about its world famous creamy mustard. Our guidebook explains that Burgundy produces ‘80 per cent of all condiments in France’ (a useful stat to add sparkle to any dinner party), and that there are six factories producing mustard, although 90 per cent of the mustard seed used comes from Canada (another sparkling mustard fact). ‘Fascinating,’ says E, when I read this out. ‘Truly fascinating.’ Apparently the ‘high temple’ of mustard is just round the corner on Rue de la Liberté at a shop called Maille, which we walk over to, discovering the first genuinely busy tourist sight in the city. A sign on the outside explains that Antoine Maille opened his first mustard shop in 1747. The façade of the shop is decorated in gold and black lettering and the shiny window reveals a collection of ceramic antique mustard pots as well as modern versions you can buy. It quickly becomes clear that there is more to Dijon mustard than, well, just mustard. For a start, there appears to be no end to different flavours. Great shelves are stacked with pots of blackcurrant, parsley, basil, green pepper, honey, cognac, fig and coriander varieties. There are even curry-and-coconut and seaweed-and-rose-petal flavours (if you fancy trying something more outlandish). A display explains that for each season of the year four different types of mustard are tried out on the public as part of an édition limitée. The latest concoctions include lemon and alfalfa, tomato and garlic, fennel, and violet and rose

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 36

24/05/2011 15:41:37

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

petals. Apparently the best selling of the four mustards tested is then kept on, extending the wild and wonderful shelves full of flavours. I buy a pot of ‘Dijon Vin Blanc’ mustard (€12), which is poured into a ceramic pot from a tap that looks a bit like a beer pump, from a woman who tells me: ‘This is the most popular.’ ‘Why is it pumped out like this?’ I ask. ‘Because in the old days you would have your ceramic pot, and you would have it refilled. One pot per family,’ she explains, before adding: ‘We sell about 40,000 kilos of mustard every year.’ Which sounds like a whole lot of mustard. She explains a bit about the history of the company, which dominates the Dijon mustard market along with Amora, another brand. ‘Antoine Maille discovered the secrets of vinegar distillation and mustard making,’ she says, handing over my pot. ‘And he gained the trust of the public. Soon he was named vinegar maker and distiller to their imperial majesties in Austria and Hungary. Later, he supplied the King of France and Empress Catherine II of Russia.’ His reputation was sealed, and subsequent generations of Mailles kept up the family tradition, though it’s now owned by Unilever. Unfortunately for Dijon, there is no European Union law protecting the use of the term ‘Dijon mustard’, as there is protecting champagne and Parma ham, the friendly assistant tells me. So most of the production takes place outside of Dijon; though there are several local factories. ‘Now I’m an expert on mustard!’ says E, as we leave. ‘That and the dukes and the roofs of Dijon, all in one day!’ The things you discover on a high-speed weekend break. Afterwards, we wander about the streets, taking in the distinguished façade of Hôtel de la Cloche, a fine old building dating from 1884, near the station. We go inside and find a grand lobby

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 37

24/05/2011 15:41:37

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

with a huge chandelier and reproductions of the portraits of the Golden Age dukes on the walls (there’s no escaping them). It’s now part of the Sofitel chain and it was originally opened for train passengers travelling from Paris to the French Riviera – when trains weren’t so fast and the journey was best broken up with a stop along the way. We learn this from a hotel brochure in the stylish bar, where we consider having a lunchtime Kir Royal (until we see the price: €18 a glass). Each of the rooms at Hôtel de la Cloche is named after a local wine, and many of its guests are on wine tours of the region – so says a receptionist. She hands us a list of room rates: €200 a night for the cheapest double. It’s twice the price of the Philippe Le Bon (which we’ve grown very fond of, in our funny apartment-room), but you can understand why people will pay extra for here. There’s a real sense of the excitement and grandeur of the early days of train travel in the hotel, which appears to have been given a modern makeover, while retaining all the old touches. Grace Kelly, Maurice Chevalier, Auguste Rodin and Napoleon III, among many other famous people, have all stayed, according to the receptionist. ‘Next time here, eh?’ says E, raising an eyebrow. The hotel feels almost frozen in time… and it gives pause for thought. Catching trains around France used to be an extremely glamorous affair and station hotels like this are living proof of what that time must have been like (if all the glitz of Hôtel de la Cloche is anything to go by). Looking around the lobby, it’s hard not to imagine what might happen if fast-train travel really does pick up across the Continent. Are we on the verge of a return to those glitzier times? Will we all soon be zooming around Europe on faster and faster trains, stopping off at modern-day versions of the Hôtel de la Cloche along the way? Is a whole new world of travel about to open up?

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 38

24/05/2011 15:41:38

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

Perhaps. But we’ve got a city to explore. We exit down the grand steps of the hotel and stroll along to the Jardin Darcy, passing a sculpture of a polar bear we recognise as being created by François Pompon, whose collection we’d seen earlier at the art gallery. We’re becoming experts on Dijon art! We continue along to the eighteenth-century Porte Guillaume, an arch with a plaque with a bust of Thomas Jefferson at its base, celebrating the 220th anniversary of the French Revolution and bearing the words: ‘Symbole de l’Amité Franco-Américaine.’ We look into the Romanesque stone church of Saint Philibert, which was used a storage room for salt during the French Revolution. And then we catch a TGV train twenty minutes southwards to Beaune, otherwise known as the ‘wine capital’ of Burgundy. We’re going for an impromptu afternoon trip (why not, we’d thought, when passing the station and seeing a train was about to depart?). Tourism may be going slowly in Dijon, but it’s booming in Beaune. The speedy train ride is through landscapes covered in neat green strips of vineyards, and we are soon amid pleasant squares with agreeable cafes and restaurants in an ancient walled town full of shops selling wine and streets packed with holidaymakers. After the quiet atmosphere of Dijon – which we’ve both loved – it’s almost a shock to the system. Americans pass by saying: ‘Gee, I think the wine museum must be that way, I’m not sure.’ Well-to-do Brits head to shops with ‘visite gratuite dégustation’ advertised outside. Local women walk poodles in the shade of plane trees in the squares. Queues stretch out of boulangeries. People pull cases towards the Hôtel des Ducs de Bourgogne. E says: ‘Oh no, they’re after us again!’ She’s referring to the dukes, not the tourists. The main attraction, other than the wine, is the Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune, a charitable almshouse dating from the time of the

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 39

24/05/2011 15:41:38

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

rule of Philip the Good. We enter and find ourselves in a courtyard surrounded by buildings with familiar multicoloured roofs. ‘It’s the roofs again!’ says E, who clearly has a thing about the roofs of Burgundy. Inside, we see the rows of tiny beds that elderly folk in need of help used to sleep in, and we slightly wonder whether the entry fee was a touch steep (six euros each). But then we step into a crowded, darkened room with a picture on the far wall. It is a version of ‘The Last Judgement’ by the fifteenth-century Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden. It’s absolutely beautiful, painted in vivid golds, pinks, greens and reds, with Christ at the top, the Archangel Michael in the centre, making his decisions with the help of scales he’s holding, and little naked human figures either heading to the right to a fiery hell, or to the left to a golden door leading to heaven. There is something captivating about the picture, which runs over nine panels: a style of religious painting known as a polyptych. We stand amid the bustle (the room is totally packed), looking at the lovely work of art and almost feeling as though the characters are coming alive; the expressions look so real, the agony of those condemned and the ecstasy of those ‘saved’. It’s quite a painting. Feeling as though that picture alone has made coming to Beaune worthwhile, we go out into the main square. One of the great pleasures of Beaune is its many upmarket wine merchants; all of which offer free tastings. It’s not the wine capital of Burgundy for nothing. We find a posh place on a corner of the square, in which sparkling bell-shaped glasses are placed on old barrels. Almost before we know what’s going on, a bald sommelier presents us with a red wine from the nearby Nuits St Georges vineyard, smiles and says: ‘A votre santé!’ We sip our drinks, looking out at the baking streets. But it’s cool in here, with air conditioning softly whirring and the bald

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 40

24/05/2011 15:41:38

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

shop-owner poised to offer us another sample. If you played the game, you could make a good afternoon of trying all the visite gratuite dégustations of Beaune – and probably not even have to put your hand in your pocket once. We stay for another. From his demeanour, the sommelier really doesn’t seem to mind if we sit around here all afternoon. It’s really rather splendid, sitting by the barrels with our glasses and watching the world go by. After buying three bottles of red, neatly boxed up by our friend, we zoom back on the TGV to Dijon for an evening in Place Émile Zola, where it’s another busy, sultry night on the square. I eat delicious beef bourguignon, a regional dish, while E has a salad, at a restaurant with crisp white tablecloths. And, of course, we sample some more wine. ‘This is definitely a cheeky place to knock back a vino,’ says E, sipping a crisp white Bourgogne Aligoté. ‘Very cheeky indeed,’ I reply, enjoying a delightfully smooth Mâcon red. Without really intending to, but with a sense of inevitability after our first night, we’ve learnt plenty about the wines of Burgundy. Well, I suppose it would be churlish not to. ‘Have you enjoyed Dijon?’ I ask E. ‘I’ve loved it,’ she says, taking another sip. ‘I expected it to be industrial and full of factories. I don’t know why: I just did. I like it because it’s normal. It’s just French people going about their lives.’ As she says this, as if to prove it, a group of children rushes by. Place Émile Zola certainly feels very laid back and normal. ‘That’s what I like,’ she adds. ‘It’s not terribly trendy like Paris. It’s just a nice place to come for a couple of days.’ I agree. There’s been plenty to see and do, it’s relaxed, there are lots of nice things to eat and drink. But almost more than all of that, the sensation of arriving by train – of speeding in on

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 41

24/05/2011 15:41:38

TALES FROM THE FAST TRAINS

the fast tracks, without seeing an airport waiting lounge – has made the trip feel like a proper break from the moment we met at St Pancras. From the off, it’s been totally different to flying somewhere. Somehow, and it’s difficult to quite know exactly how or why, it feels as though we’ve got to know Dijon much better than if we’d arrived by plane. It just does. In the morning, before catching our midday train home, we do one thing we could not fit in yesterday: an early morning dip in Lac Kir… named after the cocktail-loving mayor. The lake is not far from the station, a few minutes by taxi, and soon we find ourselves by a sandy artificial beach with a handful of sunbathers already reclining on towels. There’s a row of white changing huts with little A-shaped roofs painted blue – free to use and spotlessly clean. It’s a superb morning. Across the still, green water weeping willows line the far bank, where there’s a small park and a hill dotted with houses between trees. No one is in the water, and the early morning sun is just the right temperature. A few brown ducks paddle across the middle of the lake, beyond buoys marking the safe swimming limit. Kids are bouncing basketballs at a nearby court. Joggers have stopped by a set of climbing frames and are doing various vigorous stretches and pull-ups. A couple cycles by on a tandem bike. It seems amazing that such a peaceful spot could be so close to the centre of town, and it makes us think the quality of life in these parts is really very good indeed. It’s got wines. It’s got history (we’ll never forget the Dukes of Burgundy). It’s got stunning galleries and sleepy cafes and lovely old squares. It’s got terrific lakes that feel as though they’re deep in the countryside, even though they’re right by the centre of town and the station.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 42

24/05/2011 15:41:38

DIJON: ‘KIR ROYALES WITH THE DUKES’

We swim out through the fresh cool water to a platform and lie in the sunshine. What a perfect way to relax before the journey ahead. This afternoon we’ll be back in the heart of London, after watching the French landscape zoom by… and we’re looking forward to the ride.

Tales From the Fast Trains _INSIDES+ct.indd 43

24/05/2011 15:41:38

www.summersdale.com

£8.99